Manual Labour and Biblical Reading in Late Medieval France

Abstract This article discusses artisans and people doing manual work in the French-speaking areas of Western Europe who owned and read the Bible or parts of its text during the late Middle Ages and the early sixteenth century. The historical evidence is based on post-mortem inventories from Amiens, Tournai, Lyon, and the Toulouse area. These documents show that Bibles were present in the private homes of artisans, some of them well-to-do, but others quite destitute. This development was probably related to a shift in the cultural representation of manual work in the same period: from a divine punishment into a social space of religion. The simple artisan life of the holy family, as imagined based upon the Gospel text, and their religious reading practices were recommended as an example to follow by both lay people and clerics.